A School Psychologist's resource for all things tech.

You mean Google, right? Nope. I meant to say Doodle. Have you ever had a hard time find a common meeting time for the entire IEP team? Wow! Me too! Doodle has been a great solution for me and it can be a great solution for you. First of all Doodle is FREE. So that is a plus. Also it is easy to use.

Anyone, without setting up an account (you can set up an account but it isn’t required), can start a doodle. The person coordinating the meeting would go in to doodle and choose all of the available dates and times. Usually the person setting up the doodle knows about special times for the general ed teacher, lunch schedules, staff meeting dates and times, etc. Offering options that aren’t going to be available for required team members, such as the general ed teacher, are counter productive. Once all of the dates are identified and inputted then a URL is created. The URL can be emailed out to the entire team and each individual uses the link to go in and view available times. Based on schedules and current availability team members can indicate their availability just by clicking a checkbox. Once everyone has weighed in on their availability the coordinator can go back in to the doodle and easily see what dates are available for everyone – hopefully you can find at least one time available for everyone. Depending on a variety of factors some parents are included in the initial weigh-in on dates or other times the teacher contacts the parents with the couple of options that are available for everyone.

Photo Caption: Photo from Doodle.com

You can’t quite avoid those times when two meetings are scheduled simultaneously for the same date and time but Doodle helps alleviate the flood of “Reply All” emails that can inundate you when teams are attempting to schedule meetings for the whole team. Happy Scheduling!

P.S. Once you’re at the meeting use any or all of your ToDo list, notetaking, or project management apps to keep you organized and on-top of it all.